Hello All, back one again with a top 200 that will either delight or fill you with fear!

There'll be dance routines a go-go, standing up on key changes, a fair amount of flesh on show, and of course a string of TOTP, CD:UK and live performances to get all nostalgic about.

The period covered by this thread will be 1988-2004, and the sales tallies are actual sales (in 99%of the cases)!

Thanks to Music Week, Wikipedia, You Tube, "The 1000 UK number one hits" book, MFR, Polyhex and chart stats for their help in this.Rules for Inclusion

This countdown only includes “solo” records by girl groups or boy bands so songs such as “Against All Odds” by Mariah Carey & Westlife WON’T feature.

The sales figures relate only to the period up to 2004 and DO NOT include any subsequent download figures.

GIRL GROUPS- relatively easy to define, all female groups with at least 3 members regardless of the genre they operate within.

BOY BANDS- A much more difficult genre to define than you might imagine. So obviously all members must be male, there must be at least 3 members in the group, operate mainly within the “pop” field and not be over 30 when they had their biggest stint of fame. Arguments could be had all day over whether or not such and such a group were a boy band or not so I’ve plumped for what I consider to be relatively safe options with one or two possibly contentious inclusions (mainly those calling themselves “vocal harmony groups”).

So sit back over the forthcoming couple of months, pin those old posters up and relive some of the more embarrassing teen moments of your life and yes you may SCREAM!

First up some 90s boy bands for all the output just couldn’t interest enough of you to make this list.

ULTRA- Four top 30 hits in the late 90s for the band named after the Depeche Mode, the biggest of which was “Rescue Me” which became their sole top 10 hit. They were dropped after their first album failed to set the charts alive.

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2WO THIRD3- Pronounced “Two Thirds” in case you wondered, they were a novel concept from Tom Watkins of a boy band consisting of openly gay men. A support on tour for East 17 in 1994 gathered enough attention for this top 20 hit, it was perhaps a bit too adventurous for the early 90s and this was as good as it got. Apart, that is, for one member Richard Stannard who went on to write many hits on this rundown and a few Spice Girl’s number ones!

9mAbsKEyKtsUPSIDE DOWN- Before the slew of X Factor esque programmes in the 00s, there was the creation of Upside Down, their creation and the story of the band up to their first release was screened as one off on BBC 1 in early 1996 as a documentary “Inside Story”. The result was this track jumped from 35 to 12 (its midweek position was 41) and they got 4 top 30 hits out of it before we realised they weren’t much cop.

Well it cuts to the chase! We'll start the countdown properly on Sunday (I'm still writing the final entries) BUT later on and until then I'll post some 00s boy bands and some girl groups that the record buying public spurned!

Okay good. So "Whatta Man" featuring En Vogue should technically still feature then. Salt-N-Pepa's always been a tricky act to label as a group or an duo. Same with Right Said Fred for me (I never really noticed the bass player in the group!).

Okay good. So "Whatta Man" featuring En Vogue should technically still feature then. Salt-N-Pepa's always been a tricky act to label as a group or an duo. Same with Right Said Fred for me (I never really noticed the bass player in the group!).

Collaborations aren't eligible Right Said Fred would qualify IF they were a boy band....

WORLD’S APART- For a time in 1994 these were the third most successful boy band around with 5 chart hits to their credit. They were much bigger in France where they got 5 top 10 singles, the groups later incarnations (post 1995) included former Brother Beyond Vocalist Nathan Moore who went to be Lisa Scott Lee’s Manager- not his only failure then.

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BAD BOYS INC- Unusual claim to fame here, this band were the first to appear on the “National Lottery” programme! Anyway 6 top 30 hits showed they were moderately successful- in reality they were never more than c-list in the boy band stakes, still enjoyable early 90s pop for all that.

This should be exciting. My main interest of the two has always lied with girl groups (I'm a huge sucker for the kick-ass feminist, take no shit attitude especially, even more so when it's mixed with killer harmonies) but certainly it was easy to find some boybands to like during the sea of them that were around post-Take That/Boyzone.

Ultra were really coma-inducing. One of those uber-serious, trying to be "credible" boybands with REAL INSTRUMENTS(!!) but everything about them, to the lead singer's voice and the tunes themselves, was nondescript as hell. The fact they even managed to get any hits at all is just testament to how teenage girls would cream over any vaguely good-looking group of guys back in the 1990s. I'd love to say I'd forgotten about them but I was actually watching a Top of the Pops episode on YouTube which Rescue Me was performed on only a couple of weeks ago, and the fact that I'm STILL struggling to remember how it goes says it all about what a tune-free bore it is.

Upside Down - Change Your Mind manages to sound like perhaps the most painfully 80s song that WASN'T released in the 1980s for the simple fact it rips off Careless Whisper to ridiculous degrees. If I hadn't seen it in the charts for myself in 1996, I genuinely would have believed it was released ten years before that. Shockingly bad.

I'm actually not familiar with any of the others. My knowledge of shit budget pop and never was's only REALLY begins in 1997.

Any chance of an honorary mention of my absolute favourite 00s also-ran girlband (in the UK charts at least), Bardot. The original Australian Popstars winners in 2000, I'm not ashamed to say that their eponymous debut album remains my favourite ever girlband album, and still resides in my top 30 favourite albums of all time

They won't feature here, their big debut single Poison had backing from SM:TV and CD:UK and still couldn't quite make it into the top 40 They had loads of other songs that were as good as or better than that though - What Have You Done, Higher Than Heaven (yes, a Kelle Bryan cover!), Girls Do Boys Don't and ASAP.

2WO THIRD3- Pronounced “Two Thirds” in case you wondered, they were a novel concept from Tom Watkins of a boy band consisting of openly gay men. A support on tour for East 17 in 1994 gathered enough attention for this top 20 hit, it was perhaps a bit too adventurous for the early 90s and this was as good as it got. Apart, that is, for one member Richard Stannard who went on to write many hits on this rundown and a few Spice Girl’s number ones!

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The lead singer Lee was a very good friend of mine.... we grew up 10 minutes from each other...... it's such a shame the band's album never saw the light of day - it was truly excellent, stellar pop all the way.

This single was ok (and surely had one of THE best TOTP appearances of the whole decade), but it was 'Hear me Calling', their debut (and the fantastic remixes) I'll always return to.

Why specifically 88-04 by the way? Seems like a bit of an arbitrary period

Yes I should give some explanation. Well the advent of the modern concept of "boy band" really started with Bros, certainly from a marketing angle, and cases have been advanced for the earlier 80s band who had a large female following (Duran Duran, Wham!, A-Ha! etc) to say they weren't boy bands in the modern sense of the word. Also from a sales point of view the figures become very reliable, and at the other end it excludes downloads and of course who can say what 99% of these tracks are selling under the radar. In any eventuality the era when boy bands and girl groups were probably at their height was through this period.

BBMAK- Starting in the late 90s no-one took much notice of this group until they made the top 20 in the US and their singles were given another chance. Two albums in and the band called it a day without really getting anywhere, still two top 10 hits means at least they are spared the epitaph of “one hit wonders”.

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V- Along with McFly these guys supported Busted on their tour in 2004, and scored three top 20 hits in 2004 but after a disastrous debut album flop split in 2005. In fairness their sales were more reflective of the time they were around than being any worse than a lot of bands who made our rundown.

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PHIXX- They might have produced more hits than the ill fated One True voice, but the band (who comprised guys who had just failed to make into the line up of the latter band) sold nowhere near enough copies of their debut hit “Hold On Me” to make this rundown. Main front man Mikey Green famously dated Sarah Harding for part of the early 00s and the band scored four top 20 hits during their two years together with some suggestive videos.

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D-SIDE – Pushed as the NU-WESTLIFE very briefly back in 2003 the band quickly hit the top 10 three times that year, too bad that’s practically all they had to offer- now who can remember these?

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TRIPLE 8- This group never even got as far as the first album despite only releasing two singles, both of which went top 10 in 2003. Pushed as a UK version of N*Sync (quite why that was needed as the original band weren’t that big here but hey-ho) they split from their record company in early 2004 and ended up in the wilderness as the charts turned against Boy bands quite decisively. Band Member Justin Scott is of course now dating Girls Aloud star Kimberley Walsh